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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/23666173">After Heroes and Villains</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/WritersOnTheWall/pseuds/WritersOnTheWall'>WritersOnTheWall</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>(probably), And heroes get hurt, Angst, Anxiety, Asexual Luna Lovegood, Back to Hogwarts, Depression, F/F, F/M, Hogwarts Eighth Year, Hogwarts Inter-House Friendships, Hogwarts Inter-House Rivalries, Hurt/Comfort, Kinda good Slytherins, M/M, Poor kids, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Post-War, Protective Slytherins, Self-Reflection, Slytherins are great friends, So much angst, The Weasleys need to heal, The others are also good, Therapy would be good, They'll get along eventually, Traumatized students, War is horrible, a lot of it, friendships, really - Freeform, these kids need HELP, villains are people too</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>In-Progress</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-04-15</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-05-18</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-03 00:20:55</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Teen And Up Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>Graphic Depictions Of Violence</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>2</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>1,974</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/23666173</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/WritersOnTheWall/pseuds/WritersOnTheWall</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>What comes after a battle has been won?<br/>Where do the heroes and villains all go?<br/>Do they shrink underground without making a sound?<br/>Or will they disappear into thin air and the solitude of despair?<br/>Do tears dry in their eyes as they ask themselves why?<br/>Or might their mouths quirk in a smile and forget for a while?<br/>How many nightmares can fill up their dreams?<br/>Where can they go when they cannot be free?</p><p>|A post-war Harry Potter fanfiction. Lots of angst, some comfort too.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Astoria Greengrass &amp; Draco Malfoy, Draco Malfoy &amp; Theodore Nott &amp; Pansy Parkinson &amp; Blaise Zabini, Draco Malfoy/Theodore Nott, Harry Potter &amp; Ginny Weasley, Harry Potter/Ginny Weasley, Hermione Granger/Ron Weasley, Luna Lovegood/Ginny Weasley</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>12</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>1. HARRY: The Boy Who Lived Twice and Died a Little Inside</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>Alright, first chapter of our first fic on AO3 is up! We're excited to get started, and hope that you'll enjoy :) A quite short chapter to begin with, but they'll get longer, we promise :3</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  <em>‘I have fought a great deal more battles in my life than many, I suppose. Battles for my life, for someone else’s, and sometimes even without any serious implications. Battles between friends have been worse, in many ways, but better in the way that no lives have been lost. No innocent blood spilled and bled onto my conscience. Some of my battles have left scars, like the one on my forehead that everyone in the wizarding world seems to know, whereas others have left me seemingly unharmed. Yet, magic cannot fix everything, and so I wonder, sometimes, if there are some scars that are still there, even though no one can see them. I wonder if I am really as fine as I’d like to pretend to be, and it pains me to know the answer.’</em>
</p>
<p>To be completely honest with himself, Harry had no idea of what he was doing anymore. Somehow, now that the war was over and done with, it seemed as if though his life was lacking in purpose. He had always been The Boy Who Lived, but now the threat had been eliminated. He had done what he was supposed to do, and so, it seemed as if though there was nothing left.</p>
<p>Perhaps for that reason he had agreed to Hermione’s proposal of returning to Hogwarts. After all, Hogwarts had always been his home, and there had never been a time when he had felt so lost before. Not even when he had been living with the Dursleys. Where Harry had once thought that his home was in the wizarding world, the end of the war had managed to truly shake those beliefs. The Weasleys, with all their kindness, were broken by the loss of Fred, and as much as Harry would have liked to say that he was sharing in their grief, it wasn’t the same. Hermione, as much of an outsider as he, still had her escape into the muggle world where, Harry knew, she could pretend to be someone else entirely.</p>
<p>He had nothing, and the crashing weight of that had finally caught up to him, now that his primary concern was no longer survival, or Voldemort, or even a looming threat in the far-off future. No, all was <em>well</em>, and somehow that meant that nothing was.</p>
<p>He had hoped, when he had sent the letter to Hogwarts, that it would be a relief to walk the familiar corridors and return to the now so familiar routines. He still lingered on that sliver of hope, but there was something else mixed with that now. Harry knew that feeling well: dread. After all, he could not know if Hogwarts was going to be home anymore either. Not when he had seen it crumble, seen the bodies of<em> children</em> in the halls, and smelled the blood and ashes as he walked towards his death.</p>
<p>Only that he hadn’t died. Harry knew that it was ridiculous to linger on such feelings, but a part of him was quite sure about the fact that he really ought to have died. After all, it wasn’t fair that so many students that were younger and far more innocent than him had met their untimely demise without a chance to return. It wasn’t fair that he should have been given what no one else was.</p>
<p>A second chance, which he was too afraid to really take up on.</p>
<p>“Harry, mate,” Ron’s voice broke through the haze, and Harry flicked his eyes away from the too-bright walls of his best friend’s room. The Chudley Cannons, still present after all the years that had passed. A relic of what had been, once. “Harry, you alright?”</p>
<p>Was he alright? Of course not, but that wasn’t what Ron was really asking. What Ron was asking was more along the lines of ‘Are you having a mental breakdown, or shall we leave?’ because that was how things were, now.</p>
<p>“It’s fine,” Harry decided. “Just that, well, returning to Hogwarts is throwing me into a bit of a… well, you know.”</p>
<p>“Yeah, I know,” Ron said with a sigh, sitting down on his bed next to Harry. How many times hadn’t the two boys squeezed into that bed during the summer, both too scared to sleep alone, both too terrified of their nightmares? Those were not memories that Harry cherished. “I wouldn’t have gone if not for Mione, you know? She… Well, she doesn’t like to admit it, but she’s scared, too. Of what it’s gonna be like once we’re back. And I’m scared of what I would be like without either of you. I’d go nuts, I tell you.”</p>
<p>Harry knew, of course. Those were things that they all knew, yet rarely spoke off out loud. It was better to keep silent, because then they could pretend to be alright, still. Pretend to be children, not survivors of war.</p>
<p>“I know,” Harry said, throwing a sympathetic look at Ron before standing up. “We’d better get going, then. Don’t want to miss the train and force Mione to be all alone there, right?”</p>
<p>With a somewhat pained smile on his face, Ron nodded, following Harry through the door. They’d be alright, in the end. They always would. They had to be.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0002"><h2>2. RON: The Price of Victory Is Grief</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>Ahh, it's been all too long since the first chapter. This one had been almost done since then, but we finished it only now. Hope you'll enjoy!</p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  <em>‘I used to be the last choice. Not on purpose, I suppose, but mum had her hands full with the rest of them as it was, and when Ginny came along, she was obviously the only girl. I would’ve been lying if I’d said that I wasn’t jealous. Of course I was, of all of them. Bill was the oldest, and that meant that he didn’t need to make much of an effort, although he did. Made mum so proud. Charlie wasn’t the same, but he had his charm, and his passion, and he was still the second oldest. Percy, smart, of course, and a prefect, and a model student. Fred and George, always causing a ruckus in the house, always distracting mum and dad. And Ginny, the girl, the youngest, who was in the same situation as Bill and didn’t need to do much to get much. And me, of course. Me, who didn’t have anything special and who was always last to be remembered, until Harry chose me over everyone else. Sometimes I wish I could go back to being invisible, boring Ron, who hadn’t done anything grand. Invisible, boring Ron didn’t have nightmares every night, didn’t have a dead brother and a shattered family, and most certainly didn’t have the heavy responsibility of a hero without ever deserving such a title.’</em>
</p>
<p>The car was new, a gift from someone whose name Ron couldn’t be bothered to remember. The leather seats were squeaky and clammy, and the smell of <em>new</em> stung in his nose, but at least it was clean and dapper and fast. It was fine.</p>
<p>His father was driving, and despite the love that Arthur had always held for muggle technology, there was no cheerful chatter floating around in the car. Only silence, heavy like the casket that Ron had helped carry not long enough ago. Arthur’s hands were squeezed tightly around the steering wheel, the lines around his mouth deeper than Ron had realised before. He looked as if though he hadn’t slept in weeks, which was probably true. He was coping through his work, and the family just had to count on him actually coping.</p>
<p>The seat next to Arthur was empty; Ron, Harry and Ginny had all opted to sit in the back, where they could focus on the physical closeness instead of the mental distances. Ron was sat in the middle, no questions asked. He hadn’t wanted to pry, not when Harry and Ginny hadn’t said anything, but it was painfully obvious that the two were going through <em>something</em>. Ron didn’t want to say that it was bad, necessarily, but Harry’s guilt in combination with Ginny’s distanced denial wasn’t giving either of them anything good to work on. Perhaps the two would last – they hadn’t broken up yet, really – or perhaps they wouldn’t, but Ron sincerely hoped that they would at the very least stay friends. Both of them deserved to be happy, someday far off in the future when the sorrows of war could be forgotten.</p>
<p>As for himself, Ron supposed he was as happy as he would ever be. Sure, Fred’s death hurt. It hurt a lot, and Ron had nightmares about it. And sure, he had nightmares about a lot of other things too, but really, he was<em> just fine</em>. And if he wasn’t, then at least he was surviving and that was probably just about enough anyways. He didn’t need the perfect ending; not when he had been given an ending where he was, at the very least, alive. So many others had not gotten even that much of a happily ever after, as the muggle stories would tell.</p>
<p>“It- uh, it must feel odd to attend Hogwarts for eight years,” Arthur said with a cough, apparently finally tired of the silence. “Of course, you didn’t- well, your seventh year, you didn’t… Well.”</p>
<p>So, the silence landed heavily again, as if though demonstrating that it had more power over their lives than they did. Ron hated the silence, and at the same time, he loved it. It was so much better than screams, spells, cries, and explosions. And yet, the silence stood not only for a time of peace. No, it stood for death, for grief, for the end of innocence and the loss of happiness. The loss of Fred, and at the same, George. His brother who was merely a ghost although he was still alive. Ron could not even imagine how George must have felt, when he himself was already so downright miserable.</p>
<p>“It’s good to be going back,” Harry finally said with a faint smile. Ron appreciated the effort – he knew that Harry did not do it for himself, but for the Weasleys. “I missed Hogwarts. I always have.”</p>
<p>“You wouldn’t if you’d been there,” Ginny said, but so quietly that Ron knew no one had heard it but him. His sister did not wish to hurt anyone else, after all. It was just that all she seemed to have left in her were her words, quick to slip off her tongue and strike right where it was the most painful.</p>
<p>“It’ll be manageable,” Ron said faintly, wondering if it really would be. Wondering how bad it possibly <em>could</em> be, and dreading that he could not imagine enough. “Can’t be any worse now than it had been before.”</p>
<p>He wasn’t exactly sure who he was aiming his words at. His father, as to ease the worry that he knew the man held? Ginny, as to prepare her for the reality that she would have to face? Harry, as to remind him of the fact that things <em>were</em>, objectively, better? Or himself, in a desperate attempt to keep up the illusion of happiness instead of grief?</p>
<p>Arthur hummed in acknowledgement, and the car fell into a heavy silence yet again. A part of Ron would have liked to hear a proper conversation; another part of him was ridiculously grateful for being allowed this moment of quiet before entering the buzz of the station. He was <em>glad</em> that they could still be broken now; at Hogwarts, they would never be anything but fine.</p>
<p>After all, Ron knew just how much was expected of him, of Harry, of Hermione – even, by extension, Ginny and other members of Dumbledore’s Army.</p>
<p>If they couldn’t show a happy face and a confidence that Ron now, more than ever, didn’t have, then who could?</p>
<p>Only that it was hard to go and face all that, and a part of Ron wished that he would never have become a hero.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>Thank you for reading this chapter! Again, any and all feedback is welcome :)</p>
<p>Next up: Hermione!</p>
        </blockquote><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>Thank you for taking your time to read our first chapter! All feedback is welcome, but please be constructive with any criticism.</p><p>Next up: Ron!</p></blockquote></div></div>
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